Fiction Review: "Tattooizm," Kevin Moffett

This review was originally published on Pol Culture.

A remarkable aspect of fiction is its ability to captivate us with the lives of people we otherwise wouldn't have anything to do with. Andrea, the protagonist of Kevin Moffett's 2006 short story "Tattooizm," is an aimless 19-year-old slacker living in a beachfront Florida town in what appears to be the mid-to-late 1970s. Apart from her boyfriend Dixon, a 24-year-old aspiring tattoo artist, she has no real ambitions or interests, and that relationship has lost its appeal for her as well. The only thing holding them together is sex, which annoys her--she wonders if it is "turning her into a dull and contented cow." She looks forward to classes at the local community college that fall, but she's more engaged by her idealized notions of being a student than any interest in the work it entails. Aside from sex, the only thing she gets active enjoyment out of is yelling "Cajun" at the local drifters when the car she's in goes by them. The irony is that her attitude towards life isn't far removed from theirs--it's the same mindset at an earlier age. The wonder of "Tattooizm" is Moffett's ability to create such a compelling character study from such a dull, empty life. From the story's opening paragraph to its epiphanic conclusion, it is nothing less than captivating.

The conflict that drives the story is Andrea's resistance to Dixon giving her a tattoo. Dixon is, in some ways, just as much an overgrown baby as Andrea, but unlike her, he's not apathetic. He is engaged with life, but he's a fool--destined to be confounded in everything he does. He's the sort who will convince himself that driving the speed limit will mean his never having to stop at a red light, and he holds to that no matter how often it's demonstrated he's wrong. As for the tattoo, he sees it as a sacrament between him and Andrea; her assent to it would be a way of saying that, no matter what, a part of him would always be with her. It's permanent; it's a commitment. And Andrea, whose thoughts are inevitably daydreams to take her mind off the present, keeps putting him off. The only thing she wants of Dixon in the future is some clever way of describing him to friends and boyfriends down the road. She'll look back on him fondly, but with the affection she'd have for "an old toy or a book that she read in bed when she was sick." Moffett carefully builds the tension in Andrea's attitude towards Dixon over the course of the story, and it's not giving away too much to reveal that she does finally agree to the tattoo. The surprise is in the tattoo Dixon chooses to give her. He turns out to be not quite as big an amiably headstrong dope as he originally seemed, at least as far as Andrea is concerned. He fully understands her attitude towards him, and the tattoo reflects this. It's something she can choose to acknowledge or not acknowledge forever; no one will know unless she goes out of her way to tell them, and even then they might not believe her. It's permanent, but it only requires the commitment she's willing to give it.

What makes the story work is Moffett's effective shuttling between his development of Andrea's view of Dixon and his treatment of every other aspect of her life. The Dixon passages are the foundation, with the others like momentary departures from a melody that are terrific music in their own right. We see the fun she has with her younger brother while baby-sitting him, her looking back on her friends and boyfriend from high school, her fantasies about school in the fall. Moffett's pacing is immaculate. He never dwells on anything too long, and his rendering of the scenes and Andrea's musings are both concise and fluid. It's hard to imagine he has a high opinion of his protagonist, but his tone is so breezy that one never catchs him making a judgment. He demonstrates that no character is too insignificant for a capable writer; one just needs to give everything its proper development and weight.

"Tattooizm," by Kevin Moffett, is featured in The Best American Short Stories 2006.

Fiction Review: "On the Lake," Olaf Olafsson

This review was originally published on Pol Culture.

Reading "On the Lake," a short story by Olaf Olafsson, is like walking on ice on a pond and suddenly noticing the surface cracking with every step. The cracks become more pronounced as one continues, and one can only think of two things. The first is reaching safety, while the second is wondering when it exactly was that the ice first started to break. Suddenly, one falls through the ice. The water isn't anywhere near deep enough to drown, but the shock of its cold is enough to knock one silly, and it may also spur one's memory of the small, almost imperceptible sound of the ice when it first began to crack. Later, after one is out of the water and safe, that memory dominates all one's recollections of the event. All one can think about is that sound and one's failure to heed it at the time. In "On the Lake," Olafsson portrays a marriage that suddenly comes apart at the seams. It's easy to pass by the moment the unravelling begins when one reads it, but the story's ending brings it back so sharply that one is left slightly stunned. Rereading the story, one finds the memory of that crucial moment reverberating through every sentence and scene.

The story's protagonists are Oskar and Margret, an Icelandic couple spending spring vacation at their lakefront cabin. Jonas, their six-year-old son, is with them, and the story begins after he and Oskar were in a boating accident earlier that day. Oskar attempted to turn the boat too quickly, which caused it to capsize. The water is still dangerously cold, but Vilhelm and Bjorn, their neighbors on the lake, manage to rescue them in short order. No harm is done, but afterward, Margret seems suddenly estranged from Oskar. The two thank Vilhelm and Bjorn by having them over for food, drinks, and cards that evening. However, by the time the night has ended, Margret does something that seems almost calculated to end her and Oskar's marriage, and the moment she lost her faith in him is revealed.

And, as Olafsson makes subtly clear, this is a marriage based on faith, at least on Margret's part. There are women who never outgrow the need for a father figure; the men they take as lovers and husbands are ones whom they're convinced are strong, omnicompetent, and able to take care of them through thick and thin. Before the boating accident, Margret saw Oskar in this way. Olafsson writes:

She had spent her childhood summers by the lake with her mother and her siblings, her father coming out as often as he could. She had hoped it would be the same for her and Oskar. Until this evening, she had been confident that it would.

Marriage for Margret has been a way to maintain the security of childhood. The cabin is something of a synecdoche for what Oskar represents (or had represented) to her. It's the proof that he is a strong provider and protector: he successfully built it from the ground up, and the cabin is an improvement on his father-in-law's--which his father-in-law even acknowledges. Margret has gone from father to husband, with the two men filling the same role at different times of her life.

Oskar's ability and drive have their flipside. He's a deeply egotistical man who looks for ways to demonstrate how much better he is than everyone else. His target before the events of the story has been his father-in-law. But after the rescue, Oskar is clearly humiliated by the fact that Vilhelm rescued him and Jonas, and he never misses an opportunity to belittle Vilhelm later on. He exaggerates his own role in saving Jonas and downplays the danger the two were in from the near-freezing water. He loans Vilhelm some dry clothes after they come ashore, but he can't help but mock how Vilhelm looks wearing them. Much of the evening that follows is spent playing cards, with Oskar boorishly criticizing Vilhelm's playing at every turn. Hints scattered throughout suggest that Oskar senses that the rescue has caused Margret's regard to shift from him to Vilhelm, and he thoroughly resents it. Vilhelm saved him and Jonas when he was helpless to do anything. Margret now sees him as weak and Vilhelm as strong. By the end of the story, it is clear that the foundation upon which Margret and Oskar's marriage was built has been destroyed.

Olafsson masterfully builds the tensions between Oskar and Margret to a climax. He never overstates Oskar's insecuritites, and he keeps the reader guessing at Margret's exact thoughts until the very end, when all is revealed. The repeated references to her looking away in response to Oskar are particularly notable; they almost function like a refrain. Overall, the pacing has the feel of an instrumental piece in which every note is made to count and be savored. Every sentence contributes to the story's momentum and overall effect. Flaws, such as the question left hanging of Vilhelm's exact relationship with Bjorn, are piddling. Olafsson takes a marriage suddenly faced with collapse, and gives it the tempo of a thriller. It's a superbly crafted piece.

”On the Lake,” by Olaf Olafsson, is featured in the Winter 2006 issue of Zoetrope All-Story. It is also included in Olafsson's collection Valentines, published by Pantheon, and in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2008, published by Anchor Books.

Fiction Review: "A Game of Cards," Rose Tremain

This review was originally published on Pol Culture.

Rose Tremain’s “A Game of Cards” is a study of lonely, wasted lives, presented as a confessional account. The narrator, Gustav Perle, is a hotel owner in Switzerland. He reflects on his life, particularly his friendship since childhood with Anton Zweibel, a local piano teacher. The portrait Tremain paints of Gustav is a profoundly sad one: he is incapable of intimacy and devoted to routine. His relationship with Anton seems more a pretense of a friendship than an actual one, and it too becomes defined by a routine--Anton exists for Gustav as a partner in daily gin-rummy games. Gustav has no family of his own and no dreams; his moment of crisis comes when Anton, late in life, is offered a chance to move into the world of recording and recital tours:

The prospect of Anton’s departure, the appalling idea that he would become famous, made me feel so utterly cast down that I found it impossible to move from my armchair. In this godforsaken hour, my life as a hotelier--from which it was far too late to escape—suddenly appeared to me as irredeemably mundane, shallow, and pointless.

This is an off-putting moment of self-absorbed reflection. There’s no happiness at the prospect of Anton finding fulfillment; the situation only serves to remind Gustav of the absence of dreams and ambitions in his own life.

This moment reveals the exact nature of the relationship between Gustav and Anton. They exist to reinforce the other’s justifications for refusing to engage with life. Both are anxious at the prospect of ever leaving Switzerland, and, as such, they stay put. Both feel threatened by the prospect of sharing and sacrifice that comes with marriage and raising a family; Gustav is even repelled by physical intimacy--he describes being French-kissed as a young man “as though some newly hatched blind eel had slithered its way inside my mouth.” The totem of their friendship is their constant gin-rummy games, and one comes to recognize the games as a shared means for Gustav and Anton to deny how lonely and empty their lives are.

The story doesn’t seem as affecting as it could be. Tremain structures it well. She firmly establishes Gustav’s feelings of anxiety about the unknown, carefully developing it from his trepidation about life outside Switzerland to his rather startling aversion to women and the prospect of starting his own family. (One infers from the story that Gustav is a lifelong virgin.) The “crisis” of Anton pursuing his musical dreams is also effectively developed. The problem may be that Gustav is too passive a character to keep the proceedings compelling. Anton seems a much more dynamic personality. If Tremain had told the story from his perspective, showing how his anxieties are confirmed and his aspirations are brought down by his relationship with Gustav, the story might have been far more dramatic. However, it must be said that making Anton the narrator might pose its own set of problems; his hanging around with Gustav--a wet blanket if ever there was one--might strain a reader’s patience. Loneliness and failure in life--particularly failure borne of the anxiety of making the attempt--are difficult subjects to tackle for a storyteller, particularly without resorting to the sensationalism that Dostoyevsky, for one, would have brought to such material. One can admire Tremain’s restraint, as well as the considerable craftsmanship she displays in this piece, but one can’t help but wish for something more dynamic.

”A Game of Cards,” by Rose Tremain, is featured in the Summer 2006 issue of The Paris Review. It is also included in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2008, published by Anchor Books.